Monday, June 29, 2015

If you are here to dream a little dream of sailing, then I'm here to help! That is, after all, how my dream came to life:

Imagine :: Visualize :: Realize

This blog started with our launch, October 24, 2010, and sails along with us for three years. Since this is a blog, the sailing posts are scattered a bit willy nilly -- and in reverse order, so I've gathered them here in chronological order, starting with that hyper-emotional day we finally untied the lines, a day I had dreamed of a bagillion times.

And if you're interested in how we arranged our lives to go sailing, there's a whole other blog for that, called ploddingTOparadise…

SAILING AWAY: Year One, Phase One

Down the ICW, Manteo NC to Miami FL

DAY ONE: Our New World | Manteo NC to Engelhard NC | October 24, 2010This morning we left Manteo on four hours of sleep, nervous, fidgety and lacking faith in ourselves and the GPS. Chip and the GPS performed flawlessly. I sat on the life jackets and wept.

Engelhard NC to Beaufort SC
After breaking those final land ties, we struggled to find our new footing. The unrelenting demands of life underway were harder and more exhilarating than we had imagined.

Isle of Hope GA to Vero Beach FL
As we headed south, trying but failing to outrun a super-cold winter, the days grew shorter, the temperatures dropped, the tides turned epic and new friends appeared at every turn.

Stuart FL to Miami FL
Once we left Vero Beach, the Gulf Stream became our focus, a challenge we had dreaded for years but one that would deliver us -- finally -- to paradise. We concentrated on preparing the boat and ourselves to make the big hop from Miami to Bimini.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Christmas is a great opportunity to put some serious jolly into our little cottage, but with our commitment to staying small and living clutter-free, we wanted to get just enough to be merry and bright without accumulating a bunch of stuff that had to be stored for 11/12 of the time.

The solution: Get small. Here's how the whole show -- on a placemat:

Three boxes of miniature ornaments, two boxes of lights, two boxes of candy canes, two pairs of Christmas socks and one Santa hat. Now add one tree.

Clothespins and gift bags for Chip's advent calendar.

And then a serious wrapping party. Santa has to get to work early when his kids live in foreign countries. Christmas socks for everyone!

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Every holiday calls for its own festive decor, but that decor doesn't have to come from a store. In the interest of living small and shrinking our footprint, we made tracks -- and collected our own centerpiece.

I threw the turkey in the oven and off we went to meander the streets of St. Helena, enjoying the crisp fall day and foraging for flowers, leaves and berries.

Friday, October 10, 2014

After living for four years onboard our beautiful Cara Mia, with all her warm teak and built-in furniture, setting up camp on land has been more challenging than I anticipated. Our tiny, 512-square-foot house seems so cavernous, echo-y and stark white.

We don't want to own a lot of stuff, but we want to be comfortable. When we moved in, we made a commitment to living small, an exploration of the foggy space between stark and too much.

What is the minimum requirement for living comfortably? Is clutter a human condition? Is it possible to live small, to avoid the escalation game?

In this Living Small experiment, I've listed the contents of the bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, but the living room hadn't reached that heady space of just enough. We were lacking a table.

Our tiny space called for a flexible table, small enough to be inconspicuous, but big enough to seat four in anticipation of all the new friends who will grace it. That flexible table also had to serve as my desk by day and our dinner table by night. A contracted search for a vintage drop-leaf table tried my patience, so after five months of going table-less, IKEA came to the rescue. I thought I'd outgrown IKEA, but that's just one more of life's happy surprises.

This beaut has the perfect dimensions and blends right in with our gold/black/red motif.